Reception of the "Soviet project" in North Ossetia: small towns and their role in the socio-economic and cultural processes of the 1930s-1980s

The purpose of the article is to study the main characteristics of some urban settlements in North Ossetia in historical retrospect. The measurement of the cultural heritage of a small city is a scientific lacuna. For the first time, the documents and materials introduced into scientific circulation from the Central State Administration of RSO-Alania allow us to analyze the urbanization processes in the 1930s and 1980s as the directions of the"Soviet project". The methodological approach of the "social space" is taken as a basis, which makes it possible to combine the ideas about the formation of the appearance of new cities with the real processes that took place in the second half of the twentieth century. Urban planning plans were closely connected not only with economic factors, but also largely depended on the ideas of national-political zoning. Residents of new urban settlements for a long time found themselves in a transitional state from a rural resident to a city dweller. A large body of documents introduced into scientific circulation for the first time allows us to study not only the positive changes in the social and economic structure of North Ossetia, but also to note the reason for the utopian nature of many plans for turning small towns into large industrial centers. The phenomenon of a small city allowed us to determine the origins of the conflict between plans (desired) and reality (result).